I'm just a cock-eyed pessimist

Man, I never caught up with LJ yesterday. I didn't finish reading the new stuff that was there at breakfast, and I didn't read catch up in the evening with the stuff that came in between 5 and 11 PM. And, well, er, it goes without saying that I didn't have time to post after noon (being far too busy chatting with people on a post about poop. Americans, I want your feedback on this one!).

Instead I was 1) working like a starving monkey (actually made my way to organ grinder yesterday, special project from CTO) and 2) living life. Life, you say? Why yes, for last night I went to see Carlos Acosta (sigh) at Sadler's Wells with mabel_morgan, bathtubgin, and a cast of thousands. God, it's amazing to see a dancer who's at the top of his form, especially when "his form" is in practically another universe from other dancers. I really thought the other performers were A quality, too, but, well, when I was grading papers in grad school, every now and then you'd get a paper that was, well, this mini-dissertation that made you want to sit down with the person who wrote it to further probe their views, have a conversation, you know? That's Carlos Acosta. His Corsaire was what the choreographer dreamed of in his head, I just know it.

We got out of Sadler's Wells pretty early, all things considered, and made it back in good time. And yet, still no LJ, because I was chatting with a friend back home and looking for my November BFI calendar (movies of Tsai Ming Liang, hurray) to no avail, and writing (gasp!) email to another friend. What's the world coming to, when I don't have time for the internet?

Right, going to make an egg and bacon sandwich and NOT catch up on LJ again. No idea what we're doing tonight, but I'm sure we'll manage.

It's the last possible day to see Across the Universe in a theater (uh, I mean cinema, right?). J and I will be at the Odeon Panton for the 5:30 showing. Would anyone care to join us? And yes, I'm giving up going to the gym today and having a nice, back-muscle-relaxing Pilates session for this as I want to get out of here right on time at 5 for once and an hour and a half lunch break would kill that plan.

Also, I'd like to declare a moratorium on the use of "meh." If you don't care, say you don't care, don't act like a three year old who can barely be bothered to take his pacifier out of his mouth to answer your question. Even better would be, "I haven't thought about that," "I'm not feeling enthusiastic about much," or "Well, who knows, do you think it would be fun?" Otherwise I will want to kick you and will regret ever having spoken whatever it was I was saying that made you say "meh," especially if I was inviting you to come do something with me.

So, we spent twenty years fighting a "war against drugs," destabilizing governments in Central and South America, putting black men in prison in droves.

Then some guys flew some airplanes into some skyscrapers, and people went, "Ooh, er, maybe we should have caught that." And maybe if we'd spent the money we'd spent on the war on drugs training people to, I don't knows, speak languages that weren't Russian and Chinese we might have.

Now we're fighting a war on terror. Piles of money are going toward fingerprinting everyone who wants to come the the US, filling the coffers of Halliburton and Blackwater, and finding way to decrease civil liberties and freedom of movement and limit immigration, in the name of "protecting the *cough* homeland." We're doing things Americans once whispered happened in the Soviet Union and Chile (tortures, disappearences) and people are telling each other they have nothing to be afraid of if they're not guilty of doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, on the home front, we've had rolling power blackouts, the complete destruction of a major US city by well-anticipated weather problems, the collapse of a heavily used bridge in another major city for no reason at all and now the southern coast of California burning up in uncontrollable wildfires.

You just wonder, should we maybe be spending our money on improving our infrastructure, dealing with natural disasters, and improving the state of The States rather than waging a "war" in a foreign country and a, er, war against the civil liberties of people at home and across the world?

You just gotta wonder, I say.

Wow. Across the Universe bowled me over, rather like The Wall did when I saw it some 20 years ago, in the very distant past, only not quite as creepy/full of death and bad shit.

I even cried. I'm such a baby.

Now I'm waffling as to whether it was a 3 1/2 star movie or a four star, like Chicago and The Matrix.

God, it was good. I'd imagine it wouldn't be so pleasant if you didn't like the Beatles, though. But for me, so many of those songs were just full of extra added memories, from Siouxsie and from growing up and listening to my mom's records and from playing Laibach's Let It Be in the tape player as I drove around the country with Mary.

Or maybe that never happened and I only listened to it in my grandmother's kitchen while washing dishes. But its eems like it should have.

Oh, look, it can now be seen on YouTube. Can't everything these days? So now it can be your memory: how I first heard Across the Universe: